Except lifting weight has a DIRECT affect on increasing muscle mass. Doing pointless algorithms don't have any direct affect on your coding skills. I know plenty of college grads that can memorize all sorts of algorithms, but are shit at real world code. If I'm a company hiring to do REAL WORLD CODE, I'm going to ask questions pertaining to the position I'm willing to fill. The problem with these companies, is that they are hiring more than they need, therefore they aren't asking questions pertaining to any REAL job they're looking to fill.